Memories of a Massacre (2024)

Memories of a Massacre

A film concerning the most terrible carnage in modern Egyptian records will be available on streaming services later this month.

Nicky Bolster has created a documentary about the Rabaa massacre of 2013, named Memories of a Massacre, which can be ordered on Apple TV and Prime Video as well as other platforms from 20 February.

At least 900 individuals were murdered when Egyptian Army soldiers and police opened fire on demonstrators requesting that then President Mohammed Morsi be restored on August 14, 2013.

Morsi had been overthrown and imprisoned following a coup d’état led by his defence minister and army chief, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, one month earlier.

After Morsi was removed from power, Rabaa al-Adaweya Square in Cairo’s Nasr City neighborhood became the center of anti-coup protests, with Morsi’s supporters establishing a camp there.

Many of those present belonged to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood organization, while others were pro-democracy activists who had previously opposed him.

Sisi, the post-coup de facto ruler of Egypt, announced plans to clear the protest camp and later sent in his armed forces which slaughtered thousands of people.

Moments before the assault loudspeakers repeatedly played looped pre-recorded warnings about an imminent dispersal. For many people the first warning came when live ammunition was fired.

Years later Human Rights Watch published evidence indicating authorities had planned a mass killing. The movie contains footage confirming this showing snipers positioned atop buildings around the square and helicopters firing down upon it.

The film also boasts an impressive roster of interviewees including witnesses and victims’ families alongside former U.S. officials journalists and activists.

Ben Rhodes former deputy national security adviser under President Obama sums up how Sisi and his co-conspirators correctly predicted no US resistance to Morsi’s overthrow would occur.

Rhodes connects that non-action with what happened at Rabaa Square.

“It was one of the most infuriating, disheartening, disappointing moments for us as a government because we had made a decision not to push back against this coup and now we’re living with the most acute consequences of it,” Rhodes states in the film.

However, despite these high-profile appearances, at its heart the documentary is about those who lost loved ones during that day’s events.

Bolster’s work concentrates on deaths such as those of 17-year-old Asmaa el-Beltagy and Mick Deane of Sky News.

The killing of the former daughter to a senior member within Brotherhood ranks and latter journalist from England serve as symbols for indiscriminate Egyptian security forces gunfire.

Initially released for private screenings on the tenth anniversary in August last year, this wider distribution makes Memories of a Massacre one of very few English-language accounts available about what happened.

Watch Memories of a Massacre For Free On Gomovies.